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Monday, June 27, 2011

My daughter is a klutz. Combine her lack of grace and her proclivity for impulsiveness and you have a 3-year-old walking time bomb. Little C is an accident waiting to happen.

I love my daughter dearly and wouldn't trade her crazy personality for the world, but I can't take my eyes off her for a second. I often say she is payback for everything I did to my parents, that if she had been my first child there probably wouldn't have been a second.

We're averaging about one ER trip a year with Little C. And these ER trips aren't the boring ear infection/high fever/croup ER visits we endured with her big brother. No, she likes to make them really interesting.

Let's see, the first one really wasn't her fault (actually it was her brother's fault), but it just proves that she's an accident magnet. She wasn't yet 2, and she was playing on the preschool playground with Big C and his classmates. Big C decided to toss a large stick behind him, and that stick managed to land itself in Little C's eye, leaving a nice red dot, big enough to make mommy worry about a scratched cornea. 2+ hours in the ER for diagnosis of "it's nothing."

ER trip #2 was way more exciting because it involved a ride in an ambulance. It was a ridiculously hot day as we sat through Big C's t-ball opening ceremonies. Little C was hot, tired, and hungry and wanted nothing to do with her stroller. She was protesting that stroller so enthusiastically that she held her breath until she passed out. I'm not overstating when I say I was checking for my daughter's pulse while a friend called 911. By the time we got to the hospital she was walking and talking. 1+ hour in the ER for diagnosis of "you have a very strong willed child who made herself pass out."

ER trip #3 was just a few weeks ago. Miss Grace tripped at school and landed her head smack dab in the corner of a table. Tons of blood, ear-piercing screams, and a whole lot of commotion getting to the hospital. 2 hours in the ER for a papoose, 5 stitches, and a doctor who looked like a supermodel and had the bedside manner of a man who had never talked to a child before.

While all of these incidents scared me, I'd have to say the biggest scare came last week. I'd be exaggerating if I said that Little C almost drowned, but there's really no other word for it. She was under the water and unable to breathe despite her best efforts to surface for an uncomfortable length of time.

I won't go into the details of how she fell in the pool during her group swim lesson or how the lifeguard did nothing while I sprinted across the pool deck and pulled my daughter out of the water because that's not the point of this story (and because I've already shared my thoughts on this matter with the facility's aquatics director). My point is that Little C is keeping me on my toes and giving me the grey hairs I somehow avoided with Big C.

I can't watch her every second of the day, and I certainly can't cover her in Kevlar. But she's like a walking time bomb. I can't predict when she's going to throw a tantrum worthy of a loss of consciousness or smash her face into a table or require the services of a lifeguard. I guess all I can do is to stay calm and be prepared.

Do you have accident-prone or impulsive children? How do you keep from losing sleep at night?

9 comments:

Your daughter sounds like me. At 18 months I had plastic surgery because I had cracked my head open to the skull. There was a "drowning" incident at a birthday party one year and I promise you, my mother, father and husband are STILL kept on their toes by my klutz skills. As much as I'd like to say, "Hang in there, it gets better," I'm pretty much walking proof that "once a klutz, always a klutz."

My daughter isn't clumsy at all (thankfully) but I was growing up.. I've had a stick up my foot, an earring pulled through my ear lobe, fell off the top bunk got a huge black eye, and almost drowned in the Atlantic ocean all by the age of 6. My doctor even made my mom leave the room to question me about being abused, the school nurse did the same thing. And my teacher would call my house randomly..they honestly thought I was being abused because I would come to school covered in bruises.To this day I trip/fall/or run into something at least twice a day.

We've been to the ER a few times - one when my son was 9 months old and I closed his finger in the bathroom door - I cried more than he did and it ended up being okay. We went when he was 3 for an allergic reaction to sesame in hummus. We went most recently for asthma-attack-like symptoms.

Although both of my kids are pretty rambunctious, I'm hoping we won't deal with many serious injuries. My husband and I managed to keep from breaking arms or legs growing up even though we always put ourselves in situations where they could have happened. They've both banged into the coffee table and gotten black eyes. But so far nothing too too gory or serious!

Oh man I could go on forever about the events involving my daughter. I am seriously going to be medicated for the rest of my life because of my now insanely high level of anxiety. Lets just say that we have already had 5 staples in her head, huge and I mean huge eggs about her eye that resulted in double black eyes, blood trailed through the house making it look like I had murdered someone and mind you it was a cut smaller than small just happened to be a head wound. I swear my child should wear a helmet 24/7!

CRAZINESS!!! My daughter is a little daredevil but nothing too scary yet (shes only 2) and well my son is only 3 months so nothing yet! My daughter use to cry so hard she turned purple and stopped breathing.. she would get so mad and just stop! SCARY! BUT when I was a kid my mom said I use to get so mad i would hold my breath too until i passed out! she said i did it a lot and the doctor just told her to make sure i didn't pass out on anything to hurt myself!

That is so scary! My husband and I are both clumsy, though not to the degree of needing the ER so frequently. We are worried though, that our daughter isnt going to stand a chance! With her having two clumsy parents, she's probably going to be just like us!

I'm a writer, a mom of two, a girlfriend, a former military spouse, a runner and swimmer who can't live without yoga and meditation, and an adventure seeker. Hang out with me for a little while. Read more!